


Hidden

by Memesogny



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-21 04:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21293486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memesogny/pseuds/Memesogny
Summary: Could be described as a slow burn but a lot of it is focussed on my ss and her backstory, which all leads to the eventual romance with Hancock. It begins in the vault  and it's a good 10ish chapters before ss and Hank even like each other so make of that what you will.
Relationships: John Hancock & Female Sole Survivor, John Hancock (Fallout)/Original Character(s), John Hancock (Fallout)/Original Female Character(s), John Hancock (Fallout)/Reader, John Hancock/Female Sole Survivor
Kudos: 10





	1. A New Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've had the first 10 chapters of this written for more than a year so I'm finally deciding to post this and in about a week, after I've finished exams I"ll try to add some more to this so it has a happy ending at least. In the mean time please don't be too judgmental since this is the first fan fiction I've actually uploaded since i was like 14 but any tips or advice would be super helpful and appreciated.

**1\. A New Place (alternately "Worst Case Scenario")**

For anyone who'd been listening in the vaults were a familiar idea by now, with giant holes being dug up mysteriously throughout the more populated areas of America. They'd kept it all a secret before the particularly memorable vault-tec advertisements had been broadcast on every television and radio station.  
The money they had put into this place was obvious.  
Even with the knowledge that within minutes there would be people dying from radiation exposure not even 60 feet above above each of these 20 peoples heads, you could still appreciate how vault-tec had gone out of their way to provide comfort for the average American family; with metal walls and metal ceilings and even metal chairs, a real homey vibe. Not that there are actually any real families in here. There's a headcount of exactly one person under the age of eighteen and the only married couple look like they're just about ready to kick the bucket anyway. Vault 111 was provided for those who live in sanctuary hills, not a place populated by the rich but by the families that got left behind after the war; people who were too injured to work or the wives who were left without husbands.  
The vault had been provided as a home while the radiation cleared from the surface, this means that for anyone who dared to think about it they are never going to back up that elevator again. Despite everything deceptive vault-tec had done over the past 10 years they still managed to find themselves military funding which is the only reason Sam has found herself here. If Nate had trusted the military then so would Nora, even after everything the military had done to him.

Once the noise of chaos from above them starts to lower the crowd begins to move forward like a hive, Sam looks back at her older sister, Nora who is obsessively pulling her frizzy blonde curls back behind her ears. Sam dangles a hand in front of Shaun's face as a silent invitation, hoping that he will take it.  
_"1..2 ....3"_ A smiley, blue clad vault-tec employee numbers each person off as they pass. Sam's foot plants firmly in front of Shaun earning her the number twelve.  
As they pass through a couple of winding hallways they're are pointed onto a white line which leads them toward_ a_ well painted pair of pink lips bearing decidedly the fakest smil_e_ Sam had ever seen_. "Just put this on, down the haul and to the left"_ she shoved a bright blue suite towards Sam and nodded in the direction of the white line. Behind her she hears Shaun sent to the right and Nora again to the left. The six year old latched back onto Sam's hand and doesn't let go.

To their left is a small maintenance closet with four distressed women already pulling vault suites up their legs from underneath their skirts. There was a time where Sam would have done the same but she's used to the lack of privacy by now. Once she is changed, as she leaves the small room Shaun's hand once again catches her own as they both enter the hall outside. There are already a few standing out there with their heads down playing with their hands or smoothing over their hair impulsively, but no one speaks.   
Just over half of the new residents had regrouped back in the hall when they're ushered down the white line by a small but loud man in a lab coat; they're led to a large square room filled with 6 metal lunch tables and a couple or armoured vault-tec employees lining the entrees._ "What about mum?" _Shaun whispers  
"She'll catch up soon, don't worry." Sam tries to comfort him but he still keeps his eyes locked behind the two of them. The same kid that Sam had come home to find playing with a huntsman like a pet now looked like he could fall apart if someone were to breath in his direction hard enough.

Sam sits down at the end of one of the tables with nothing to do but think about everything that has happened within the span of half an hour but with Shaun already looking like his eyes might pop out of his skull Sam she couldn't risk looking unstable.  
Minutes of silence pass in the giant room before Nora returns, her new vault suite showing just how little she had eaten in the past months. She gives a silent hug to shaun but the worried look on her face is still there.  
After ten minutes no one has been told anything. The act of obedient blue cattle stops when a few families begin to talk amongst themselves; it doesn't take long for things to escalate into one angry farther yelling at one of the security guards. _"We weren't expecting you so early, we're just completing some last minute preparations."_ The security guard seems distressed despite the light armour he is wearing._ "If you would just sit back down and wait."_  
Sam loses interest in their conversation and looks back towards her family to find both Nora and Shaun's eyes glued to her like she'll have something to say that will put them at ease. She doesn't. A short silence follows as Nora tries to come up with something to distract the three of them._ "I bet this isn't what you'd meant when you said you wanted to start fresh."_ Nora's words may have meant to be a joke but the light hearted laugh that would usually follow sounds more like a grunt. _"They haven't checked us for radiation yet."_ Sam had already begun talking before she realised how discomforting what she had to say was. "We_ could have carried it down."_  
The room had almost gone hushed again and all Sam can focus on is the clicking sound of her sister's wedding ring hitting the matching one she had been wearing around her neck all this time. Of coarse she had been thinking about Nate all this time, she still holds onto that part of her life so desperately; and yet it was Sam who came back from war and not Nate. The same week that Sam had been sent home for her injuries Nate had been killed.

The crackle of a speaker fills the air. _"Residents one through twelve enter room A."  
_Sam stands up without a word, remembering the number she had been given upon entry. The child wrapping itself around her leg almost takes her by surprise when she tries to walk away. _"I'll see you in just a little while, kid." _She spoke with false certainty but enough to convince Shaun. There is no getting around this, she has to do as ordered, she has to leave them. A quick glance to Nora and then Sam begins walking, trying not to panic; or at least not show it.

The cold room is filled with twelve coffin sized 'decontamination chambers' as the vault-tec scientists called them.  
_One for each of us._  
As she is pointed to her own chamber at the end of the room, it is clear that it's not just her that does not trust these things; but they all climb in anyway. The door seals itself automatically around her. The noise of the vault is shut out. Only her own breath is audible now.  
Sam finally looks out the window of the chamber to the wide-eyed stranger oposite her. The wide eyed stranger who is in the same position that, in a matter of minutes Shaun will be in.  
The crackling of the speaker comes again now in a more mechanical voice,_ "Cryogenic sequence begins in four..three."_ Sam begins to feel a cold chill run up her skin, prickling up her spine as everything seems to slow. _"Two,"_ her limbs are stiff and she can hardly even breathe in._ "One,"_ she lets out one last breath that turns white in the cold and fades, along with her vision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a bit more dramatic than I really want the series to be but i needed to get through the serious crap to get to the bulk of the story so it had to be done.


	2. Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is still sort of an introductory chapter even though I said that only chapter one would be like that but in this chapter my writing should start to sound a lot less like "here's what you missed on glee" and more like an enjoyable yet still shitty fan fiction about fucking a ghoul.  
Anyway if anyone is actually reading any of this (which I doubt since fallout 76 has killed the series) please enjoy.

**2\. Blood**

_"Critical failure in cryogenic array. All vault residents must vacate immediately." _The words fill Sam's head before she can open her eyes.  
She falls forward with a loud thud and a mind shattering ache. All she can feel is the cold, hardly even remembering where she is before she begins to cough into the floor, hitting her head agin as the coughing gets more forceful, making her open her eyes.  
Everything is darker now, and there's no one around either.Although those are both good things on account of her throbbing headache, the leaking pipes and the alarm did not give way.  
Continuing to cough, she tries to pull herself up. Slipping and falling onto her back is what she has to settle for. As she lays there in pain her eyes begin to dart over each window of each chamber and she realises that each of those pale faces is still frozen, staring out into the open where Sam lay there coughing and hyperventilating. She scrambles to try to get her feet to work again, to get her feet to pull her up off of that freezing floor but she can't help the violent pulse that comes from her insides as she leans over to empty her stomach onto the ground.  
The faces of eleven people she hardly knew blankly stare down at her shaking form, scrunched up in a ball in her own vomit; and all she does is stay there.

* * *

_"Critical failure in cryogenic array." _The message repeats for the fifth time since she had once again returned to consciousness. Her limbs ache and so does her stomach, but she finally manages her footing. She pulls herself up and away from her own sick. With the same coordination as a new born foal, the vault dweller drags herself back into the dark but giant room where she had last seen her only living family. Spotting room B, she heads straight for it, kicking a few cans as she goes and almost slipping on a loose piece of paper; all in the previously pristine room. What had gone on while she was frozen? She forcefully claws apart the door to room B to enter into an almost identical room to A. Sam stumbles to the closest chamber with the number fourteen printed above the window. Inside the small window of the chamber she sees the face of her sister, more worried than any of the others in the room. The red lever to the side of her sisters chamber gives an approving beep and the door begins to open.  
_"Nora, it's me!"_  
Sam moves forward to hold her sister back from falling while the rush of frozen air clings to her suit and the air around it like smoke. _"Nora, everything is going to be-."_  
Sam is frozen again as she pears over her sisters chest.  
**Blood.**  
All over Nora's suite and a gun shot unmistakably buried through her chest.  
Sam pulls her limp body out and plants her flat against the floor, instinctually pumping at her sisters chest, sobbing as she tries not to break one of her ribs.  
_If she was frozen like this then maybe I can still save her._  
"Nora, please wake up!." Sam begins to feel more heat under her hands.  
_"Sam."_ Nora's eyes barely open. _"Sam, Shaun has been taken." _She croaks out, paying no mind to her own injury.  
As quickly as her eyes had opened they shut again and Sam just lays there crying into her dead sisters arms.

* * *

Days had been spent starving herself in that vault, looking for anything she could find to tell her what had happened while she was frozen. She'd looked through every terminal she could find for security footage, or entries from an employee or just about anything she could find. There were long decomposed skeletons at every desk space and some that had ended up at the entrance of the vault probably from people desperately trying to escape the giant tomb that they had been trapped inside. The real information had been left in the overseers office and with a bobby pin, minimal knowledge on lock-picking and a whole lot of patience, Sam had gotten through. Inside was the skeleton of some bastard who'd locked himself in with all the supplies. In that room she found her answers.  
They had been part of some cryogenic experiment and they were all supposed to be woken up bust most of the pods had malfunctioned and others were just turned off to conserve energy. She was the only one to survive them. Everyone but herself, Shaun and Nora had been murdered in there and Sam is the only one who will make it out on her own.  
She found in the most recent security footage the murder of her sister and kidnapping of Shaun, three had entered and four had left, the only one with a visible face being a balding man with a long scar. Sam could barely see the pixels of his face but she knew that Shaun would have been terrified. Sam hardly had any tears left to cry but her chest still heaved as she hid her face underneath her fringe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this dribbled on but essentially Sister=dead, Nephew=kidnapped and Sam=sad.


	3. An Old Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'll apologise in advance to anyone who actually liked Codsworth, not to give anything away about this chapter. ALSO I have absolutely no idea how to describe the vault elevator in this so I'm so sorry for the really vague dumb wording.

**3\. An Old Place**

A 10mm pistol with a few rounds of ammo that she'd found in the overseers office, a pencil she'd picked up and some dead assholes pip-boy are the only things Sam has when she stands back onto the giant blue platform that had taken her away from a dangerous amount of radiation and would now bring her back toward it. She all those things along with the tight blue suits on her back.  
She pulls her 10mm out in front of her and holds it with her steady arm in attempt to ready herself for whoever or whatever could be waiting for her up there, except extreme radiation, she wasn't entirely ready for that.

The blue elevator rumbles to life as she commands it with her pip-boy and this time sparks fly out from the metal edges of the platform as they grind against the frame. The vault had not aged well.  
_"Enjoy your trip to the surface and thank you for choosing vault-tec." _The aged audio plays as the sunlight of the outside worlds floods her vision. As the elevator reaches the surface Sam is facing the same direction as the first bomb had come from and with the sun in her eyes she could almost swear the blue and yellow house of sanctuary looked untouched. While her sight comes back to her the broken roofs and gaping holes become more apparent and so do the dead and broken trees and the brown-yellow grass. She turns to see the chaos that must have surrounded the vault entrance. There are rusted cars everywhere and skeletons cast off to the side, the only sign of life is a raven perched atop a crane with open wounds covering its body.  
As she walks back to the way herself and Nora had come through that day and through a gate where so many others had been denied entry, she sees the rag covered skeletons of people she could recognise if she tried to; their bodies already entirely decomposed within the time that Sam had been frozen.  
Mindlessly she's walking back to the only thing with any real familiarity. She crosses the bridge to sanctuary to see the ruin that had occurred, what felt like overnight. The only visible movement is the sway of the brittle grass in the wind. she tries to cast away the slight jolt of fear that she would not be able to find another living person but it's impossible to ignore. She passes through the doorway to her sisters home to see the burnt and broken furniture lit by the burning sun that shines through the walls. there's a light mechanical humming down the end of the house and Sam takes quiet footsteps down the hall towards it, quickly placing one foot in the doorway of her sisters old bedroom and drawing her weapon. The humming suddenly become more violent and a buzz saw flies just in front of her face. Jumping backwards she gets a full view of the familiar robot, Codsworth.  
_"Sorry ma'm." _Those had been the first words he'd ever said to Sam. Nora had told her on the phone about their newest purchase, a Mr.Handy robot and only a few months later Sam had been planning on staying in their spare bedroom for a while while she figured out what to do after the military. When she arrived she'd expected an empty house as Nora had been out with Shaun, but on her second trip taking boxes into the house she found out exactly what a Mr.Handy was.  
Upon seeing her fully the robot began to apologise as if regretting the buzz-saw swing but having the saw thrown toward her again while he recited his programmed lines of apology is a good enough explanation that the robot had missed out more than a couple of maintenance checks.  
Sam jumped back again readjusting her aim for the robot and unloaded two shots into his thruster which sent him falling to the floor with no way of moving yet still swinging his saw around while talking about his cleaning he's done while she was away. As Sam breathes for a second she looks over the renowned programming of general atomics.  
_"You can't imagine the dust ma'm, two hundred years worth of dust! It never ends." _Codsworth cries._  
"What did you just say, Codsworth?" _Unintentionally Codsworth had just confirmed Sam's worst fear. Sam had been frozen for two centuries, and this was her warm welcome back. _"I do hope Miss Nora will be home soon, I found a holotape she'd left for you, I found it while I was cleaning out the cupboards. The amount of dust those things-" _Codsworth continues to bleed on about the house chores now swinging his saw less energetically.  
  


_"Hey Sam." _The holotape's recording began to play. _"I cleared out our old study for you to sleep in but I've left Nates empty gun case unlocked so you can use it, just make sure you lock it again; I don't want Shaun seeing that stuff in the house." _Nora had left her this holotape the day she moved in, only a couple of months ago. _"Anyway me and Shaun should be home about an hour after you arrive, I know he's looking forward to seeing you again after all this time."\_

Sam spent the night on a particularly dusty rug that she'd moved to the floor of the shower so that she could use the only door left in the house to shut out the noise of her dying robot as she listened to that holotape on repeat. 


	4. New World, Same Old Person

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the story moves a fair bit quicker in this chapter since I only really wanted to include things that would be integral to the story later on. It may start to sound like I'm criticising Todd Howard and his precious game for a little while and let me assure you that I most certainly am.

**4\. New World, Same old Person**

Three shots though the skulls of who she could only hope were the men on the wrong side of this _discussion, _either way they were on the wrong side of her rifle. The sniper rifle that Codsworth had saved from the nuclear fallout, that favour made the (almost) good-for-nothing bot just tolerable enough that the irony of shooting him with the gun he saved for her seem just slightly too cruel. Five more shots and Sam had cleared the place out for the cowboy who stood on the balcony of the old museum fending off the group of men that had made such a scene that Sam had heard the gun shots from sanctuary and decided to set up a nest just East of their raid.  
This is how Sam had always liked it. Just her alone sitting quietly on the outskirts of the chaos. Her rifle scope gave her enough time to consider the situation and plan everything. Besides that most people didn't have the time to figure out exactly where she was stationed among the chaos of other incoming fire and when they couldn't even hear the shot till it buries itself into someones skull. Sam never had to speak a word to another soul from up here which is why it's particularly shocking when she catches a pair of eyes looking in her direction, the cowboy on the balcony must be more familiar with snipers than the average eighteen year old they used as bullet sponges in the war; although not familiar enough to know not to trust a sniper apparently since he's motioning for her to join them.

Bracing herself before she takes a step through the doorway, and there they are; the first people in this irradiated who don't try to shoot her and it's every bit a surreal as you could imagine. The man wearing the cowboy hat is holding out his hand to introduce himself, Garvey and his group who just so happen to go by the name of the 18th century civilian colonists group named the minute men. _"We need someone else to go out there wearing the power armour out the back to scare off the raiders, and you seem capable." _the mechanic butts in speaking in an accent definitely not from Brooklyn to get to the point.  
_"You want me to go put on a walking suite of armour and risk my life so that you and your group can go find some safety and you think that somehow i'd d any better that Mr.Colonial saviour himself?"_  
"I'm here protecting these people from up here, I'll back you up but we need you to make them pull back."  
And that's how a Sam, a 25 year old who's already walking the line between consciousness and fainting due to the combined affects of insomnia, starvation and thirst has ended up charding head on through the doors of the museum to be greeted by more of the so called _raiders. _this sort of combat was completely new to sam but she'd guess that on a real battle field it wouldn't be considered normal practice to wear little-to-no armour when going up against a machine gun nor could it be considered a good idea to used guns that look more like a block of mood than an actual weapon but here she was.  
Only after making sure every last one of those badly dressed lunatics were dead did she push herself out of the power armour, snagging the fusion core that powered it before heading back towards the museum. Sam only then realised her mistake when the ground beneath her began to rumble. In that moment Sam realised exactly how unreal everything seemed from the cowboy and his mis fitting group that included a elderly woman dressed like some con artist fortune teller and what looked like a perfectly bred german shepard or how she'd just disposed of almost twenty people using military grade equipment; but thing that tops everything is the ten foot tall lizard puling itself out of the sewers like something directly from one of those comics she'd read when she was young. Sam decides now, in the worst possible moment that she could finally laught at the situation because apparently her idea of normal is about two hundred years out of date. Laughing as she begins draining bullets into the belly of the beast and making no attempt to move out of its path as it sprints towards her, taking every shot with ease. The lizard shows no signs of slowing down even under fire from both her and Garvey, Sam snaps out of her trance only metres away from the thing and her instincts kick in. She drops the mini-gun and books it for the nearest doorway just nearly missing the claws of the reptile.

In the door and shuffling to the burnt countertop while holding at her side with blood rushing out of her. the roar of Garvey's laser weapon can still be heard from inside and if she ties something around her waist to stop the bleeding she could move up the stairs and use her rifle to help.

* * *

her sleep is interrupted by a bright shining light which turns out to be the sun and her make-shift doctor, a dark haired woman who had been introduced as Marci earlier was grumbling about bringing some crazy lady back to Sanctuary with them.  
This meant that:

  1. Sam had passed out not long after her psychotic episode, and
  2. her psychotic episode had not gone unnoticed.

_"Oh good, you're awake. Now maybe our newly stitched saviour can pitch in a little." _Marci's sarcastic tone is lost on Sam's Med-ex fogged mind.  
_"That dinosaur thing is dead then?" _Sam hardly whispered.  
_"I don't know what you were dreaming about but you just helped take out a deathclaw." _Garvey's warm voice came from the doorway but sam was to sore to look.  
_"Creative name."_  
_"I'm guessing your vault didn't have those." _He looked to the torn vault suite hanging on the chair beside her.  
_"There were plenty of creative names where I'm from, just prefer to call 'em lies though." _Snarky comments were a safety blanket for Sam in new situation that made her feel more in control, although the drugs she is on seem to be helping her with that to, although if anyone had told her they were going to inject some purple liquid made by a self employed wasteland chemist Sam might not have agreed to it in normal circumstances.  
_"Well whatever your vault was doing, if you're looking for a new place I know there's a bed with your name on it if you're willing to help out around the place." _Although there were a few things left that might have her last name on it she can only hope it doesn't appear on anything too obvious. She decided there and then that mentioning that she's two hundred years out of her comfort zone might not be a good or particularly safe thing to go waving around in peoples faces.  
Sliding from the dirty bed that she'd been passed out on she tries to be vague with her words, _"I've already set up in one of these houses, been here for a week. If it's alright with you I'd like to keep the place for myself."_  
"How about paying us back for the med-ex we waisted before you start making requests" Sam had almost forgotten Marci was still standing beside her, _"Or better yet, you could pay me back for my time." _Sam already felt irritated by how shrill the ends of this woman's sentences would sound whenever she was annoyed, which seemed to be all the time.  
_"Well, what can I help with?" _

* * *

Despite Marci Long's helpful demonstrations Sam knew she couldn't be a farmer, hell she knew she couldn't be a farmer back when clean water was available at all hours of the day and much less now that it was a rarity. After picking half a basket of berries Sam found herself back at Garvey's side asking about other possible ways she could help.  
_"Well, this one isn't much help for the others.. but more of a help for me, or specifically the minute men." _Garvey seems reluctant. Ignoring the instinct to ask if he was making a shitty come-on Sam nodded to him, encouraging him to ask what he seemed nervous to ask.  
_"There's this signal coming from just over the stream, just a farm family that needs a little help."_  
"Like berry help?"  
"Something just a little more dangerous."  
"So poison berries then"

-and so Sam began taking orders from random farmers who were in fear of their lives or crops or whatever, Sam didn't really care what it was for. Something about a blushing cowgirl telling her what to do felt a hell of a lot better than the sort of orders she used to take. The gratitude and the end of a job made it feel more justifiable to go out killing people she's never even spoken to, even if she'd never get the chance to talk to the sort of psychopaths she was sent after.  
On her third _quest _out of the boundaries of sanctuary one of the farmers had asked her about the vault she'd come from, questioning how she'd ended up so good with a gun.  
On her fourth outing she was wearing a worn out old flannel and fit right in with the bland scenery and natural wildlife as well as maybe smelling just like it all too.  
The waistland was fucking terrifying and in every way Sam did not belong there but the one thing that scared her more than huge bugs, giant lizards and normal sized but angry humans was the thought of staying in that house again after she'd let herself spend the first week doing nothing but crying as her mind decayed slowly into what she could only describe as insanity. So what if she was only helping people to escape her own problems, it's a win-win for them both especially when she has a cute dog following her from place to place too.

By her seventh walk across the bridge out of sanctuary lots of things had changed. Not only had her wound healed and she'd started to notice the premature grey strands of hair throughout her usual brunette ones (no doubt a side affect of being frozen) Not only all that but everyone but Sam seemed to have settled into Sanctuary, and the more they settled the more it felt like Sam was only temporary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if the grammar in this sort of sucks since I'm not very good at that part of writing nor have I given myself to really check this chapter since I have an exam in just over a day but I tried to make it tolerable to read.


	5. New Places, New... Acquaintances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Out on her own and making a life in a new era while thinking about an old one.

**5\. New Places, New People**

_"This is boring. We should be collecting human." _The rough voice alone is enough to fuel nightmares.  
_"What? You stupid, we need smash humans!" _and apparently so is their grammar.  
_"No we need-" _The two giant green monsters conversation is interrupted by a creak approximately five metres away, which for a giant green monster is approximately three steps. this is a fact Sam is all to familiar with as she is about five seconds away from never existing again. Whether it was an inability to own up to her own mistakes or he truly deserved it but Sam couldn't help but blame Preston-Cowboy-Garvey and his nagging fucking voice that burned it's way into her head. The same voice that told her she should leave DogMeat in sanctuary so he didn't get hurt and the same voice that told her that during her journey to _'the great green jewel' _as they call it, she should stop and check on the help signal she'd picked up on her pip-boy, the same sort of help signals she'd spent the past weeks answering; the difference was that none of those signals had gotten her killed. Now, moments away from death she is once again cursed with the horrifically moral voice of Preston Garvey in her head, telling her it's a good cause to die for. Of coarse in writing all this I would like to make it clear that that Sam is capable of-

_**Screaming, gunshots and the sound of glass shattering.** _All things Sam is capable of but right now has nothing to do with, clearly since it's all coming from a block over from this big horrible building Sam had trapped herself inside of.  
**_Loud Footsteps _**from giant green men who ought not to be that big. They pass by Sam as she crouches behind a counter, next to the stairs that go up. Seven super mutants flood out of the comparably small doorway, all knocking shoulders while yelling various unintelligible battle cries; this is Sam's opportunity.  
Despite the obvious death trap before her, Sam's internal monologue had decided for her that she would sprint up the stairs and into the closest elevator (which surprisingly still works(although maybe it's not surprising considering this is supposed to be a trap)); in doing this Sam had inadvertently trapped herself further in the building all so she could help a strangely well spoken stranger calling for assistance over the a convenient radio signal.  
the next few hours were spent in the same way while she patiently waited for one of the mutants to leave the room so she could enter it without being spotted as she slowly makes her way through the old creaking tower that's hardly recognisable as the great Trinity Tower. Sam would have loved to see each and every one of those giants dead but without a silencer Sam had no way of taking out any of them without consequently getting herself killed;so for now she was learning the art of throwing various small objects such as bricks and bottles as a distraction even when she would rather be using them as weapons. By the time she's even made it to the second highest level she'd only taken care of two of them and that alone had left her with a couple of scrapes and dings.

At this height in the building half of each of the levels flooring and walling had already fallen all the way back down to the ground, leaving the sounds of cold and fast winds . This means that to make a sound that all of the mutants on the top two levels would hear it would have to be very loud. From Sam's backpack she had only a few spare items that she'd picked up since leaving sanctuary. She had a bat with a few rusty nails hammered crookedly into it, a collection of bobby pins along with the matching screwdriver, a quarter empty bottle of coolant and a few empty glass bottle, all of that and her two guns with their ammo. With these things Sam needs to create a diversion that she can escape from to reach the top floor where the prisoners are supposed to be locked.  
Sam begins work straight away at the only door that hadn't fallen off with the rest of the building structure, she guides her bobby pin and screwdriver till they fit right and begins to twist the screwdriver clockwise around the lock. Almost at a full circle when the sound of loud footsteps moving down the stairs. Right as she's about to crack the lock her bobby pins snaps loudly enough that the mutants steps quicken. Sam quickly replaces the bobby pin with the footsteps getting nearer. She takes a glance down to make sure her 10mm is nearby enough to reach but continues trying to crack the lock, twisting the screwdriver. The beast steps only metres away, about to turn the corner to see her but the lock gives an approving click and Sam swiftly moves through the doorway, reengaging the lock as she moves past.  
The room is almost as black as ink with the only source of light being the half moon that sneaks in around the drawn blinds. The light is just enough that she can assume she is alone in here but quickly fiddles with her pip-boy to use it's flashlight. There is a skeleton of a man in a suite shoved between a desk and chair, his head lies near a photo frame that Sam can only imagine had a picture of his family in it or maybe his expensive car.  
After searching through every draw and kicking at every safe she couldn't open, Sam finally accepts that there's only one useful thing in here and that's a silver flip lighter that can still hold a light flame. She pushes the Skeleton out of the way and sits cross legged in his place. First she uses the nails on her bat to shred the suit off of the skeleton into long, thin pieces, using the first shred to tie her long and overgrown fringe back from her face. She sets out five old beer bottles and fills them evenly with coolant, only leaving the slightest amount still in its container. Then she tightly pulls each rag through the top of a beer bottle and leaves the rest capped. Last she ties all five bottles together tightly with the remaining rags. Making her way to the door she kneels and places her ear against the door.  
_"Puny human gone to hide. Me wait." _The voice came from just around the corner but still out of sight from the doorway. Sam opens the door and tip toes out to the edge of the broken flooring. There is a fall of about three levels from where she stood, any within those levels there has to be plenty of green monsters walking around. Sam first drops a brick which only gathers a small crowd but their yelling was bringing more and more of them toward it and yet none of them yet bothered to even look up. Sam pulls out her five molotov combination and flip lighter; within an instant the flaming rags and bottles are being dropped on the heads of the crowd. She quickly moves back to the dark office and watches as fifteen mutants sprint past the door to investigate the screams of their fellow mutants. Sam is confident as she makes her way up the stairs to the top floor.  
_"Strong will smash door!" _Sam's confidence fades away as the voice of another mutant continues to babble.Drawing her gun and crouching she keeps to the walls.  
_"By the pricking of my thumbs!" _Sam pulls a finger across her lips but can still hear his next line, _"something wicked this way comes." _Sam moves along the edge of the cage looking for the last mutant. _"Oh beneficent bard. I was beginning to think no one would make it this far!"  
__"Where's the last one?"  
__"They've all gone by some miracle."  
__"There's just one -" _one of the mutants moves forward from deep in the cage and stands behind the oblivious man but does nothing to hurt him. He only stares back out at sam while the look on her face must have given away her horror.  
_"Oh yes, this is strong. He's harmless."_  
_"Looks it." _Sam raises a brow, almost amused. _"Why don't I just let him out then."  
"More of my brothers will be here soon. Move quick." _The green thing speaks.  
_"And here I though the rest was an obvious trap but you've got to be fucking with me!"  
__"Yes it is true Strong is a super mutant, but he respects the bard." _The man seems proud. _"There is nothing good not b-bad!"_  
_"Fine! Just shut up with the shakespeare."_

* * *

__It's hours before the three of them make it back to ground floor but the man had stopped nervously quoting Shakespeare and was beginning to make more sense.  
_"Many thanks for the timely rescue. I'm Rex Goodman, treasured actor."  
__"Don't mention it." Sam grunts. "Could you do me a favour and tell me which direction the nearest town is in, I'm looking for this place.. I don't know the name."  
__"The nearest town is just," _Rex takes a moment to point North-East, _"just in that direction."  
_With that the actor had left Sam and Strong on their own, each equally perplexed by each other.  
_"Strong travel with human. strong learn secret of humans, find milk of human kindness!"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just starting to realise as i edit these chapters that i have a terrible sense of humour so thanks to those two people who gave me kudos despite that, I'm sorry to disgrace you like this.


	6. Human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think anyone who's bothering to read this has probably been waiting for this chapter, that's right Sam finally admits her feelings for Strong. Does he feel the same way or will her feelings be
> 
> **smashed**

**6\. Human **

Neon lights and the smell of smoke had filled her senses the moment she entered the place but the dark alley ways and whispers told Sam she'd be spending a whole lot of her time hiding from the kind of assholes who would want to call this place home. Ironically a place called Goodneighbour turns out to be the sort of place you don't want to be left standing around in the streets and all the signs and smoke only leads to only one place.  
The Third Rail, she could already feel the music under her feet. There's no doubt that the main attraction of a place like this is the drinks and drugs they provide rather than the company.  
_"So you left your buddy at the door." _A well dressed man with severe burns all over welcomes her in at the entrance, _"got nothin' against anyone with a few too many rads, ghouls are obviously welcome but the mutants are a no go." _It's the first time she's heard them referred to as ghouls but since she'd walked into Goodneighbour she'd seen a fair few people with extreme radiation burns.  
The bar's neatly packed into the ground in a converted old railway station. The air is thick with smoke and the smell of what Sam can only assume is two hundred year old beer. The people aren't any more suspicious than the ones who had lingered in the doorways of the streets and alleys, most of them are drunkenly dancing to the hypnotic music and words being sung through an old microphone by a woman in a sparkly red slip dress. The rest of the crowd are mostly sat at the bar or tables in small groups or just alone. Sam takes a seat away from the crowd and watches the others.  
_"One rum and cola and-" _the gravely voice sneaks up behind her and waits expectantly for her answer, she has half a mind to ignore the offer but the risk of pissing a stranger off in a place where no one would notice if she disappeared seemed to high. _"another one of those, thanks." _She watches the ghoul sit in the seat beside her hoping to see him pay so she can figure out what had replaced the great American dollar but he's already turned his attention to her. _"So you're the one who put an end to Finn's little business deal. Nice entrance."_

* * *

With her sweaty grown out fringe stuck to her face and an empty bag on her back Sam was already pretty sick of feeling like her life was consistently in danger, so when some thirty year old guy with dirt smeared on his face tried to threaten her, Sam was sure no would miss that guy. With a super mutant following her around it didn't take much courage for Sam to pull a blade to his throat and her other hand to his back. As she had had him there with hardly enough energy to even speak, that scumbag had the gaul smirk at her, like he hadn't though she'd had it in her. The smile on his face was wiped away the moment Strong had followed her through the gates. Whether this guy had ever held a gun to someones head didn't matter he had been stealing supplies from the sorts of people like Sam who are hardly surviving on their own and that's as good as murder in a place like this. She left him in a puddle of his own blood, lying on the floor with the rest of the waistland trash. _"All that lives must die." _Strong had been left behind with the body after that.

* * *

_"You here to collect what he missed?" _In a town like this Sam isn't about to take free drinks and small talk from some stranger without at least a bit of suspicion, especially not from some ghoul with a napoleon complex.  
_"Do I seem like the type to go robbin' innocent folk?" _The ghouls voice dripped with amusement.  
_"you seem a tad nosy," _no pun intended, _"for a guy who supposedly isn't interested in stealing from me." _The ghouls grin just widened as he turned around expectantly to the old Mr.Handy robot.  
_"Mayor Hancock, two bourbons, on the house of coarse."  
__"Thanks Chuck." _The Mayor, still grinning turns back to Sam who's chosen to continue looking forward rather than meet his eye. _"Ya ain't gon' shy now, have ya?"  
__"No.." _she choked the word out. _"So, you were saying.. about Finn?"  
__"Just thought I'd come give our new visitor a Goodneighbor welcome."  
__"Well your buddy at the gate already beat you to it." _pause. _"Mayor." _The ghouls demeanour changed after she said this, before he had looked like a drunk but he looked like he had something meaningful to say now.  
_"That ain't what we're about 'ere. Goodneighbors of the people, for the people-"  
__"By the people. So you don't just take inspiration from historical figures in wardrobe and titles then." _Something about spending time with a supermutant had given Sam somewhat of a god complex and meant that for some reason shit talking the Mayor of a rough town seemed like a glorious idea in the moment. _"Watch yourself, sister." _Hancock practically growled in response. _"You best be keepin' a good idea of who's in charge." _He pushes himself off the bar counter without another word and disappears for the rest of the night, Sam however stays.

After she'd inhaled her first drink she was back to square one with no money and no food in her stomach. _"You wantin' something else?" _The Mr.Handy robot had returned, now speaking less politely probably due to the Mayors absence.  
_"..What's your cheapest meal?"  
__"they're all cheap, but we got steak going for fifteen."_  
_"You do tabs in here?"  
__"What, you don't 'ave enough to pay for a bloody steak?" _The robots voice lingered somewhere between annoyed and amused and then dropped quieter. _"I heard you talkin' to the mayor 'bout Finn. If ya need a job then I think ya might be my gal."  
__"What kind of job?"  
__"i need you to clear out a few of the warehouses around town." _As if she needed another reason for the Mayor to hate her.  
_"How many men and how much are you paying?" _Despite the countless moral reason sam knows she shouldn't say yes she needed food and some of whatever passes for money around here.  
_"Two hundred caps for 'bout fifteen men, that good enough for ya?"  
"two hundred **caps**?" _Sam says this with genuine confusion, thinking to herself whether this robot was fucking with her or if bottle caps had honestly replaced money.  
_"Fine two-fifty, we got a deal or not?"_

Fifteen men had led to thirty-five when Charlie told 'the boss' what a great job she's done with the warehouse, "the boss' who turned out to be the Mayor. So after getting paid for the first job Sam and Strong moved on to the next twenty guys who are all raider going after some guy named Pickmen; and after she's taken out every single raider thats after this guy and he's breathing down her neck complimenting her _technique, _she decided he needs to cut it out. So while she presses the barrel of her gun to his head and he's still talking about the poetic nature of death Sam thinks she's going to need a little more than the standard two hundred caps for this job. 

_"Three-Fifty." _Sam says this with more confidence than a woman in the wrong century.  
_"Caps? Did Chuck forget to quote ya a price before he sent ya out?" _Hancock had been lazing around smoking from an inhaler when Sam had come in but he'd sat up completely now, hardly looking high anymore.n.  
_"I took out all the raiders in that place, so are you going to pay me for my work or pretend that two hundred is fair?"  
__"I asked ya to scout out the place, never said to kill 'em. Two hundred."  
__"If I hadn't taken care of them they would have ended up here, in your town. You needed this job done and now it is. Anything less that Three-Fifty is theft and we both know it." _hancock grunts and she can hear him repeating his words from the bar quietly, _'and that ain't what we're about here'.  
_"_Go talk to Fahrenheit, she's the one who'll pay ya."_

That had been the last time the Mayor had spoken to her before he stopped throwing jobs her way, so she moved onto other people who needed _help _around town. Collecting guns and drugs, taking out raiders, returning old library books, the usual jobs. it didn't take her long to wander into the memory den in search of a ghoul that Daisy had told her would need some help. She knocks on the open door frame and the ghoul almost jumps out of his skin, like he'd forgotten all about the wasteland and everyone in it.  
_"um, Hi I'm sam. Daisy told me you might want to speak to me." _Something about all the old comics and bits and pieces made Sam feel unwelcome.  
_"Oh, y-you're the one wh-who returned Daisy's book to the library." _He turns down the volume on the radio. _"I thought since you were willing to d-do that for her then you might pick up some... stuff from hu-hubris comics."  
__"You like reading too?"  
__"Well a-actually I need the silver shroud costume, it's the only one of it's kind. they were shooting the Tv show there before the war. N-No ones bothered to clear out the feral ghouls in there."  
__"_**Feral **ghouls?"

* * *

Feral ghouls, they're half decomposed, quick and hard to shoot at, as well as definitely not human anymore; and now they're everywhere. Although Strong enjoyed throwing them against walls Sam was having a fair bit more trouble seeing as her and the ferals stood at almost the same height. The old comic book store is full of them and the only gun that can take out more than one at a time is a shotgun she found on her last job. The loud blasts that come out the other side of the barrel are nothing like her usual silenced weapons which only draws in more ferals and for a moment Sam thinks that they'll just keep coming but the tap finally stops dripping and she's got all of them in one room. It's not long till she's almost out of shot gun shells and options. Her only choice is to move to the closest door which unfortunately takes her further up the stairs rather than back out into the street. She throws two grenades back out into the hoard of ghouls and sprints to hide behind the doorframe. After both explosions go off Sam can still hear the grunts and groans of a few of them and she takes out her bat to take care of the last few ferals but only as she she took her first swing directly into the head of a ghoul, she noticed the familiar artwork of one of the _astoundingly awesome_ comics that Shaun had picked out on one occasion when the two of them had made the trek out to the city. Without thinking Sam stuffs the comic into her bag and takes off back to the stairway where she locks the door behind her regardless of what could still be up stairs.

She'd only collected three obvious bite marks from the hoard she'd just faced and she was beginning to feel lucky before she noticed the strange glow from the corner of the room. If she wasn't busy wondering what that ominous glow was coming from she might have appreciated the way the green makes the silver shroud costume stand out in an otherwise dim room; although it's probably a good thing she didn't focus much on the aesthetics of the wasteland which seems like a positively depressing thing to think about all day.  
Sam's suspicion only grows as the twisted moaning of a ghoul comes from the same direction and as a bright green, glowing, irradiated and braindead ghoul walks out from behind a curtain Sam really wishes she could say that she's surprised. Between Strong, modern day dinosaurs and then people like Kent Connolly who spend all their time listening to culturally irrelevant and honestly childish shows, Sam was not surprised by this glowing monstrosity; although one thing she could still feel was the adrenaline from the total and utter fear she felt while looking at this thing.  
On instinct she grabs her shotgun and points it in the general direction of the glowing feral and shoots two shots while she desperately tries to find more shells and somewhere in the back of her mind she prays that the spread from her shotty doesn't nick the shroud costume and make this whole trip pointless. She moves back cautiously from the ghoul trying to protect herself from any more bites but almost jumps out of her skin when she walks back into a hard surface. She'd walked into a knocked over table and just below her feet was the silver shrouds silver submachine gun. She doesn't have time for questioning why a tv show would have been using a real gun and within seconds she's got the thing spraying whatevers loaded into the thing right into the ferals face that now oozes green sludge from countless holes. Despite the spray of bullets the feral didn't really seem to be having much trouble moving toward her still. This time she aims for it's knees and the thing falls to the ground, now hardly moving.  
sam slips past the undead feral and finally she's done here. Both the shroud's armour and gun packed tightly along with some bits she'd picked up for herself including a sturdy looking but most likely fake marine helmet and a couple of comic books.  
_"Glowing human, dumb."_Sam turns to see the glowing feral falling down the stairs where Strong stood. She turned back around in time to miss a sound that resembles meat being beaten at a butcher and she can guess that the feral was finally dead.


	7. The Right Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if you were hoping for an instant romance between the ice block and the ghoul but I just really super enjoy smug Hancock and all the love hate crap but it shouldn't last more than a couple more chapters.  
Anyway please pray for me since I've been doing this rather than studying for my math exam that happens tomorrow morning.

**7\. The Right Thing**

It's another one of those situations where all she can do is laugh at herself. She's currently stood over four dead bodies wearing the costume of a comic book hero with some fake marine helmet pushed over her head and a stack of 'calling cards' in her hand that kent had hand drawn for her. The bodies she's standing over belong to a bunch of drug dealers, which usually isn't a problem but these ones in particular were selling to kids. So like the magnificent hero he is the mysterious shroud swept down into the night and lay justice upon them. 

_"I heard gun shots, alright."_ 2 pairs of footsteps coming toward her.  
_"If we went to investigate every gunshot we heard there wouldn't be any neighbourhood to watch, no one likes snoopy security."_   
_"Yea, well the boss does."_  
_"Because Hancock's gonna care if we let this one go, night shifts over and I've got a lady at home waiting for me. You're waisting my time."_ Sam backs into a doorway quietly to hide. _"I'm sure your lady can wait a little longer for your-"_ both footsteps come to a stop.  
_"We better not be the ones who have to clean up after this." _  
_"You're lady is gonna have to wait a while."_  
The other man huffs. _"Hey look at this, like one of those guys on the posters."_ He'd seen the calling card.  
_"You mean the shroud, that wanker Kent always blabbers on about."_  
_"Yea like Kent would have anything to do with the murder of anyone working for Kate."_  
Both men laugh.

Sam had packed her get up back into her bag and waited for both men to leave before she re-emerged from the hidden doorway, looking like any other settler. She had tiptoed past the dead bodies and made it through to the memory den without seeing another person, thanks to the early hour of the morning. 

_"So who's Kate?"_ The ghoul jumped away from the radio he was hunched over. Sam had already gotten used to the way he jumped and figured there wasn't any way of starting a conversation without it.  
_"__Kate? L-like the r-raider?" _  
_"Kate as in the boss of those guys I just shot."_  
_"You've already got them! I should tell the listeners!"_ He immediately scrambles to announce the shrouds third lesson, as Kent had started calling them. Sam moves to cover the button that turns on the microphone before Kent can start. _"The listeners can wait, I'm going to need some information, Kent."_

So as it turns out Kent had had Sam go after three different groups who all work under the same insane and brutal raider who he didn't think to mention. That all turns out to mean that Sam needed to spend a few days figuring out where the hell she could find this Kate chick and how the hell she was going to kill her. Luckily there hadn't been to much of a grudge left against Kent when she got to sell all the chems that Kate had left around the place along with every gun and piece of armour she could find on her dead body.

_"You've gotta be going to some pretty fancy joints to get this sort of' stuff, I mean daddy-o, ultra-jet; you've even got a clean pillow here."_ Daisy looked through her items counting the caps she would owe Sam. _"So where have you been off to, sister?"_  
_"Just here and there, found a few stashes."_  
_"Just a few?"_ Daisy had noticed the over abundance of chems that Sam had brought in. _"So did you ever get round to talking Kent?"_  
_"The ghoul from the memory den? I've been meaning to."_ Sam doesn't want her face attached to anything to do with the shroud, even if that means lying to nice pre-war ghouls who gives her discounts.  
_"Don't bother, I think he's already got his problem fixed."_  
_"What's that supposed to mean?"_  
_"He's got some lunatic running round for him ,all dressed up apparently; honestly I'm hoping I get to meet this silver shroud."_  
_"Isn't that some guy from a comic book?"_ Daisy gestures to the gaping hole where her nose would have been.   
_"That's exactly why we're all curious as to how this comic book man is walking around killin' people. Hell, even Hancock's getting fidgety about it."_  
_"What, do you think the guy has been doing the wrong thing? mayor going to put an end to it?"_ Sam tried her best not to sound offended.  
_"Mayors probably gonna talk to Kent first, he's got a soft spot for the old ghoul."_  
_"Talk?"_  
_"Yea just talk, anyway I think this is gonna be about 200 hundred caps and you should take the chems somewhere else, I think there's a guy.."_

If Hancock is going to go talk to Kent he'll probably crack under pressure and throw Sam's name into the mix. As soon as Daisy puts the caps on the counter Sam's rushing off, shoving the rest of her things into her bag.  
When she gets to the memory den the place is more hushed than usual for a afternoon, although a few customers still lay inside the memory pods silently. Irma had moved to the back of the place and Sam can see her speaking with someone hidden behind a wall. Sam heads toward the open doorframe of Kents radio room without spending too much time gawking at Irma. _"Hey..um.. Kent, I was jus-."_ Sam turns into the room. The mayor had beaten her to it. She can see the sweat already formed on Kents forehead. _"Ah.. Sorry I'll come back in after."_  
_"I didn't mean to intrude, sister. You two can speak, no sweat off my back."_ Sam paused for a moment trying to think of anything that even slightly resembles a reasonable excuse. _"Go on."_ The Mayor had obviously held a grudge.  
_"Irma just told me your...pods working alright now, nothing to worry about. That's all I needed. Sorry."_ Sam takes a few steps back out of the room and she hears the mayor continue his conversation with Kent. Sam quickly moves to sit in the seat outside of Kents room. _"All I'm sayin' Kent, is that you gotta get your buddy to come have a chat, you're both mixing in some deep shit and I don't want to have to deal with another pair of dead bodies."_ Great, so Sam-or the shroud is going to have to deal with Mayor Hancock now. While Hancock walks back out through the door Sam goes to temporarily messing with the nobs of her pip-boy. He whistles and Sam sees in the corner of her eye that Irma had been talking to the mayors right hand woman who nods to Irma them starts walking towards Hancock. As both the mayor and his ginger body guard walk back to the door passing. Sam she takes her eyes up from her pip-boy to see the pitch black eyes of the mayor looking back at her with a stern expression.  
Once both could be heard leaving the doors of the memory den Sam jumps up. _"You alright?"_  
_"Y-yea, yes."_ The mayors soft spot for this old ghoul had left Kent practically shaking on the spot. _"Mayor Hancock was just curious-c-concerned about... Us. H-he's just worried about his town, w-which makes sense."_ Sam could tell Kent was repeating what Hancock had said to reassure him.  
_"And now I need to get all dolled up to speak to the man himself,"_ Sam huffed.  
_"Are you s-sure. I mean you d-don't have to. I could make an excuse."_ He pauses. _"Yea I could just go into his office a-and t-tell him that... The shroud c-couldn't make it."_  
_"Do you want to do that?"_ If the ghoul is feeling confident Sam doesn't want to squish any courage in him, who knows maybe all this shroud stuff has helped him.  
_"I want to h-help you." _  
_"We can both go in there."_ Sam knows what it feels like to try to get over her fears and she's not about to force Kent to go in and talk to Hancock (of all people) alone. She wouldn't be part of the reason Hancock bullies Kents stutter into anything worse. _"We'll back each other up."_ The ghoul smiled at her and Sam couldn't help but feel a little proud that she had done the right thing without Preston or her sister's voice telling her to.

* * *

_"Are you s-sure this is going to work. I mean w-what if he just asks for your name."_  
_"Then I'll give it to him. Shroud, Silver Shroud,"_ she finished with a James Bond accent. The shitty jokes Sam had been making were unnatural to the person she had been, even before she'd been put in that vault but to her, now they felt comfortable. The ghoul smiled at the corners of his mouth. _"You've got nothing to worry about, if you start choking up I can cover you."_ Sam wasn't exactly the most skilled conversationalist but she could make her point clear and easily hold off any information she didn't want anyone to know, the only thing she would make obvious to the mayor is that Kent and the shroud is not some collaborative gig that Hancock gets to take advantage of. 

Sam stepped into the sate house first then Kent. The guards of the building held large sub-machine guns like they were ready to shoot her down where she stood, Sam regrets leaving strong to himself out in the waists. Both Sam and Kent make their way up the stairs silently taking in their surroundings. The boarded up windows only let in small rays of light that left the building looking pretty dark and as both her and Kent made their way to the the Mayors office Sam noticed that the old floorboards seemed to creak more than the last time she had been there.  
_"So here he is, the man of the hour. Sit down."_ Hancock had deliberately made it obvious that his friendliness would only be temporary. _"And Kent's joined us too."_ Kent gave a small wave despite being only a couple metres away from the other ghoul. They both join Hancock in sitting but on the opposite couch from him. _"Guess what a little birdy tells me? Some costumed freak is operating in Goodneighbour. And the kicker is it ain't me. How should I feel about this?"_  
_"This town is ill with crime, I-the shroud is doing you a favour."_ Sam really tried to stick to her shroud accent, with the muffling sound through her mask Kent had already told her she sounded like a man but she hadn't really put much thought into what she should say. _"Your priceless, like the silver shroud himself walked right out of a comic book."_ He pauses. _"Even been killing some of the bad guys, scaring the rest of 'em. I respect that, so far. But now we've got business to talk, and you've got problems to fix."_  
_"Kate's already been k-killed."_ The mayor briefly looks over to Kent but quickly turns back to the shroud.   
_"You two thought Kate was the end of this. Kate ain't workin' independently, although I guess she just ain't workin' anymore. The lowlifes you took out all belong to the same asshole. And that assholes planing some old fashioned revenge on you."_ He moves forward in his chair. _"Lucky for you I want Sinjin to take a dirt nap, so I can provide you with a location as long as folks don't figure out I'm involved, ya' dig?"___  
"That's awfully kind of you, Mayor." She stands._ "But seeing as all they've got on me is a mask and a shitty stage name, I won't being taking out your trash as charity, ya dig?"_  
"Hang on a sec." He takes a second to speak again._ "This ain't just for me, Kent's face is at centre of all this, Sinjin knows how to blackmail and I'm guessing they're gonna use the only thing that's tied to ya'. You're doing this for him." _The voice inside her head confirms that yes, she is doing this for Kent.__  
"Alright then, where's the shroud going?"  
  


Some old run down hospital stood on the side of an abandoned area of the city with only giant bugs to shoot at. The absence of anything that screams when you hit it had already made strong antsy but he continued to follow Sam with the promise of a bunch of raiders at the end, which had stopped him from just turning back to goodneighbour and massacring the whole place. Kent had stayed in goodneibor after deciding he wouldn't be much help so Strong and Sam enter the hospital alone.   
They clear the entire first floor. The word clear, here meaning that they walked through it and not that they had killed a single person or thing. There had been a few crumpled robots and a couple of dead bodies, _"but nothing for strong to smash!"_  
_"Wait till we get a little further, there'll be plenty to.. smash. Just be a little quieter."_  
_"Puny human does not tell strong what to do!"_  
_"If they hear you before we're close they'll get away before you can get your big meaty hands on 'em."_  
_"Fine but strong leave if nothing to smash."_ Which translates roughly to: I (a very large and illiterate supermutant) am only here to kill for my own joy and when the next floor is also inevitably empty like this current one, I will go back to where we came from and kill things over there while you (Sam) will stay here looking for a man named Sinjin for another half an hour before you realise that you (Sam) have got the wrong fucking location.  
_"Can you just go back to badly reciting Shakespeare lines." _

_"You sent me to the wrong place..Mayor!"_  
"We got word that they moved out of there cause some guy in a mask chased 'em out a few weeks ago, only heard an hour back."  
"You're gonna have a lot of words if you don't tell me where the hell Im supposed to be going!"  
"The Rexford. Go do a couple jobs while I have my men look for Sinjins new hiding place. And keep your get-up on, you'll get more caps." He seemed pleased with himself for that last part.

Two days pass and Sam got herself fifty caps, without the getup; some shady character offering up a shovel and up front money, said she'd need more work later that month. Good for Sam but she'll have to find someone else for the rest of that job. Sam doesn't plan on sticking around in this town too much longer, maybe she'll find that jewel city that Preston mentioned or she'll just go back to sanctuary, anything would be better than the nosy citizens of Goodneighbour and their asshole Mayor. Maybe she could convince Kent to move down to sanctuary where the mayors are non-existent and the people in charge don't scare everyone shitless.  
At the third rail Sam spends majority of her 50 caps on food and drink that tastes like the ass of some mutated donkey but as she was informed is some new kind of crab that people eat. Over the few weeks Sam had been staying in Goodneibor she'd pretty much learnt to not pay attention to the gossip in the place or the loud confrontations that happened in the bar every night and this night was no different. People had been whispering all night and now some heavy footed idiot was hurdling down to the bottom level of the old train station desperate for a beer. What Sam didn't expect was a nervous and sweaty man wearing the neiborhood watch logo on the pocket of his shitty suite to start blabbering loudly to the entire bar about silver shroud and then about Kent being kidnapped by Sinjin.


	8. The Wrong Thing

**8\. The Wrong Thing**

_"Just past Diamond city,"_ that's what the Mayor had said and that's what Sam did. On her way to some old mall that the Mayor had promised Sinjin and his men would be holding Kent in. She'd brought strong again and this time being in the heart of the city he had lots to shoot at on the way their.  
Moving through the city wasn't any easier without the presence of hundreds of people and their cars when every five steps they'd bump into something they'd need to shoot; so it came as no surprise when it took an entire two days just to move from Goodneighbour to the patrolled perimeter of Diamond city.   
_"Jesus, I should have known! The old baseball arena."_   
_"Lots of human in there." _  
_"There's guards everywhere. You won't get ten steps in."_ The mutant accepted his loss with a sigh. Both Sam and Strong were over a couple blocks from the city but could hear the turrets and people anyway. She would go in and take a look at the place, since Daisy had promised the place was giant but for now she has to stay on track for; Kent's sake.

  
A large group of feared murders all hiding out in a mall. It's not the first time it's happened since the bombs but it's the first time some pre-war icicle has come across one with the intention of murdering them all. Strong would make all the noise and take all the fire as he killed the ones dumb enough to get close, while Sam tiptoed around in his shadow taking the rest of them out with a silenced pistol; without a drop of blood spilling in her direction. Easy. Making their way up 3 stories like this, to the old library. Simple. Watching Sinjin brake Kent's arm while all his men pointed guns in her direction. A little harder.   
_"Come on Shroud! You didn't think you'd just run in here and save the day, did you? You didn't think it'd be that easy, right?"_ He spoke like a performer and moved like a murderer.  
_"Don't touch him!"_  
_"Your right. I wouldn't want to make the shroud angry, he'll kill us all. Right boys!"_ His laugh was so clearly fot show. The way men would taunt hadn't changed unlike the way that the trees and the buildings had when the bombs dropped. It was still a contest, one that Sam had seen unfold countless times. _"You think I can't?"_ She dropped the shroud accent and spoke across the empty isles.  
_"You'll have to do better than that, shroud. I don't believe in fairy tails."_ He takes a step forward and places his hands on Kent's other arm.  
_"Which is why you've lured me here with so many men; because you don't think you need the security? Against one man."_  
_"My men are here for the same reason you brought your green pal."_  
_"Don't worry Sinjin, he's not here for you. The pleasure of killing you is all mine."_  
_"Well I'm sorry to ruin your plans but it looks like we've got you cornered."_ He moves from Kent's side and closer to the shroud. _"But one thing, before I kill you I'd like to see your face; preferably you don't make me force you."_ She could see the nervous gunman raise the tips of theirs guns slightly as she turned around. She takes the chance to think while she's not looking directly at Sinjin. She could see the restraint it was taking for strong to stand behind her wordlessly; whether he could see her eyes or not strong always understood the gesture of a simple nod. The clicking of her helmet echoes before she lifts it from her head, her neat bun bouncing out into a short ponytail. She turns again and throws the helmet across to Sinjin's feet. Silence; only for a second; just before the clicking sounds kept going.   
A fake marine helmet ought to have more than a few uses and even if Sam wasn't the most knowledgable on explosives she knew how to listen. Cracking all over the place and Sinjin and all of his men had already jumped for cover. A simple fire cracker could get the right sound to scare even trained ears. After that it was back to the simple stuff. Strong stood and took the bullets (probably just absorbing them like oxygen to make more hulk power) as he threw bullets into whatever surface Sinjin's men used as cover while Sam quietly killed each man one by one till she got to Sinjin.  
_"Are you gonna risk it?"_ He crouched against a wall with Kent in one arm and the other holding a knife to his throat. _"After all this you wouldn't, would you?"_ Sinjin was talking on borrowed time, strong had obviously shot his leg few times leaving him covered in his own blood. Even if she told him he could leave free he'd hardly make it to the door. _"What's your plan then? How are you going to make it out of here?" _  
_"You're going to fucking let me." _  
_"Let you stumble out of the room and go bleed out on the pavement?" _  
_"What do you care!"_  
_"You're not leaving. And if you don't want to die at the hand of a supermutant you might as well let Kent go."_  
_"Fuck you!"_ His hand tightens on the knife. Sam raises her gun slowly.  
_"You let him go and I don't shoot." _  
_"How the fuck do I know you won't?"_  
_"You don't. But ya haven't got much of a choice. So your gonna let him go."_ Sinjin has always been a stubborn man according to Hancock and so he continues to dig in his blade, the tiny drops of blood seeping out.  
Three shots of her pistol with two landing in Sinjin's head and one in Kent's shoulder. The cries of pain and fear Kent had been holding in all coming falling out at once. _"Kent. Shit, I'm so sorry. I-I shouldn't have tried that, I-"_she runs to his side trying to push Sinjin's limp body away from him.  
_"I just want to go home."_ He whispers, hardly audibly. _"You two look like you've been to war."_ They both have burns and cuts and blood everywhere and the shitty helmet Sam had burnt to shit was back on her head.  
_"__Thanks for all the help, Mayor."_ Kent's pissy mood had left him pretty careless about what he says and who is says it to.  
_"I'm sorry I couldn't help you any more Kent."_ Kent leads them both past the mayor with no care to his word, Sam follows but not before she feels a hand on her chest telling her to stay. Instinctively she pushes him off with no thought about the guards standing less than a few metres away. _"Listen!"_ He puts his hand back at his side and straightens out his coat. _"You and Kent should end this here, before folks have to watch him get hurt."_ Genuine worry in his eyes.   
_"Somehow I have a felling you won't have to worry about it."_

* * *

She hardly even said a word to Kent before she'd left the memory den, leaving behind the whole costume. She had never meant to come to Goodneighbour and now that she'd accidentally cut her one and only tie to the place it seems like a good time to go check out the old baseball grounds. The sea of heads not-too-far from the memory dens entrance told Sam that she'd missed the opener to one of Mayor Hancock's inspirational speeches, she takes a turn to a back alley to avoid the crowd but can still hear his words. He's talking about synthetic people and other bullshit, like his town doesn't already have a bad case of paranoia. _"When someone starts acting funny. When people are doing things they don't usually do. When family start pushing you away for no reason. We all know who's behind that kind of shit!"_ The crowd cheers for him.  
_"Education system really has gone down the drain."_ Sam mumbles to herself. She's taken out of her thoughts by the sound of croaky laughter from a few steps ahead and around a corner. "You finally come to finish the job?"  
Bobby. Of coarse its Bobby. Sam couldn't just leave to diamond city undisturbed. Sam steps up to the corner to see the ghoul smoking on a dirty sofa. _"Thought you might have replaced me by now."_  
_"Finding someone who isn't too familiar with this town is a little harder than you might think."_  
_"Don't tell me that's the only reason you hired me in the first place."_  
_"I was just lucky you're also good with a gun."_ She puts out her smoke and the grin from her ruined lips fades, _"now that you're here I think we might have some real business to talk."_  
_"Has something changed since we last spoke?" _  
_"Now that I know that you and the shroud are both.. not so fond of the mayor;a lots changed."_ Of coarse someone would notice her darting into a room and the shroud running out, she'd checked that no one was looking but this is Bobby, of coarse she'd find out. _"Hows about we go inside."  
_


	9. Old Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might seem like I've skipped some things and I have, but don't worry if I have the energy to keep writing I might explain what's happens in the next chapter as this is my last completely finished chapter and it might take me some creative sparks to actually finish this story.

**9\. Old Friend**

After Sam's business with Bobby had finished she had been a lot more eager to pack up her stuff quickly and get out of goodneighbour, but her goodbye to Kent had turned into a 10 minute ordeal while she waited for him to put the finishing touches on his gift for her. He'd fixed her helmet and left it in better shape than when she'd picked it up, the thing could actually be considered a piece of armour now; but what she'd done with it afterward had left it pretty much useless anyway. The helmet takes up half of her backpack and she can't even use it, although according to Daisy she wouldn't really need too much backpack space for where she was going, only caps. The great green Jewel. A small portion of the original Boston was now one of the only parts you could take your boots off. It isn't great either, with rust and dirt everywhere but Sam guesses that if she had grown up in dirty puddle eating canned beans with a Side of cockroach she might consider a run down baseball court a great thing. 

  
_"C'mon McDonough, tell the truth! What they did to that boy wasn't right, even you can see that!"_ A young women spoke through the large crowd of people all trying to get in and out of the city. She pointed her finger toward a well dressed man who seemed to be trying to get away from her but couldn't move against the people walking past. Turning around,he raises one pointed finger into the air and puckers his lips like looking at the women caused him physical ache. _"Listen piper, I don't want to hear anymore of this. If you keep filling this town with lies we'll be forced to keep you out." _  
So the girl has to be some sort of a reporter and the man, an incompetent politician and most likely another shitty mayor. Guess I was hoping too much for this town to have some half decent people.  
_"Protecting Diamond city means keeping me out, is that it?"_ She smirks and pushes further into the crowd, closer to the mayor. _"Ooh look it's the scary reporter. Boo!"_ By the time she finishes her sentence she's face to face with McDonough and his face only gets redder. He turns away to dive into the crowd more but pipers got her hand tugging at his suite and his crowd pleasing attitude snaps. Sam has to move through the crowd just to hear the rest of what he's saying cause he's got his voice lower and his face close to her. If it wasn't for the crowd, the grip on her arm could turn his career upside down in the old days, but Sam seems to be the only one keeping watch. _"..your synth detective friend's in trouble Piper, so I suspect you've got a bit more to worry about than that boy." _  
**Detective Synth?**  
The determined look of the reporter fades into shock for a moment too many and the man finds his way to the security stand and as the crowd of people starts to thin both piper and Sam are left watching the man walk to his elevator.

_"Thanks for your time mayor. Oh and thanks for keeping us safe for those rotten synths."_ Sam tried to sink back into the quickly evaporating crowd as the reporter starts wandering away from the security booth while she mumbles to herself. _"What's got you so interested? You never seen a man bleed lies so easily?"_  
_"Just curious about the.."_ a pause, _"_politics_ of this place." _  
_"You're not new to the Great Green Diamond are you?"_ She spoke like the ring leader of a circus and Sam could see the tips of her fingers budge as she pronounced her words; definitely a journalist. 

_"So you need some gaps filled on what goes on in this city and I need you to be a part of my new story."_ The two of them had moved into pipers home where despite the rusty walls the place had been thoroughly decorated with bits and bobs that made it not so strange to be sitting on a sofa while piper poured herself a tea.   
_"What's this story about and why am I in it?"_  
_"I need a fresh pair of eyes to help everyone see how messed up what McDonough did to that boy is!"_  
_"What did this McDonough do?"_  
_"Let his guards kill as innocent boy. He then had the Gaul to pretend that he thought the kid was a synth! Without a bit of fucking evidence! We're all too caught up in our day to day lives to see the absurdity of it and you, an outsider can show what we've all been glancing over and ignoring."_ Piper kept going on despite Sam not listening.  
So synths aren't just some Goodneighbour myth, even the mayor of the biggest settlement of the region thinks this shits real. Fake people; can't be worse than cockroaches on steroids.   
_"So you'll be quoting me but spinning it so that your readers agree with you?"_  
A pause. _"Is that a no?"_  
_"As long as my names not attached to it I'm happy to share my thoughts."_  
_"Good."_ She smiles and pulls out her notepad. _"So...synths, what do you know about them?"_

So not only were there giant lizards and zombies to defile the ruined remains of Boston but after about an hour and a half of constant talking Piper starting to go on about the institute; not only do they make robot-people but according to her they kidnap innocent people, and replace them later on so that their families don't even know.  
_"What types of people are they kidnapping?"_  
_"Smart people, Curious people; The types of people who could be a threat."_  
_"How are they getting these people out without anyone seeing them? Why don't they just kill them?"_  
_"Nobody knows. That's the problem."_ Sam clears her throat in an attempt to make it seem like the information had at least seemed somewhat familiar to her; like she isn't some vault dweller from 210 years ago. _"Just one other thing piper. I want to know if you've ever seen a man that I need to find."_  
_"What do you know about him?"_  
_"I think he's some sort of mercenary, balding with a long scar through one of his eyes."_  
_"He carry a revolver?"_ Pipers tone had quieted.  
_"More than carry."_ Sam mumbles.  
_"That's Kellogg, for sure. He's at the market sometimes usually at the gun store, always looks like he's ready for a fight, but the security have never bothered him."_  
_"Do you know where I could find him?"_ Pipers worried look says enough to tell Sam Kellog wasn't out of character when he shot her sister or when he stole Shaun out of her arms.."  
_"Blue, I don't think you want to find this guy."_  
_"I think I need to."_  
  


He's an upper-stands resident, the high end area of the town that looks down on the field; luckily even in the high end areas of town the locks are substandard.

Well lit with running water and a clean supply of food, all more than what the average wastelander could afford based on what Sam's seen so far and much more than what the people who deserve it are getting. A kidnapper and a murder gets to sit around in comfortable chairs with a cold beer while innocent people are dying out in the dirt.   
A kidnapper and a murder gets to relax with no threat, no murder and no guns. The house is filled with all sorts of shit but not a single gun.   
_"I'm either in the wrong house or this guy-"_ Sam presses herself against the wall and pushes into it without a budge, _"is hiding something."_ She moves along each meter of the inner wall pushing until she feels one move away from her weight with a whine of metal against metal. A false wall. Of coarse if his doors are that easy to pick, one can imagine the quality of a false door would not be any better. With a piece of piping shoved in the gap between the gap Sam runs at the door side on and braces herself for the collision.  
Sheets of rusted metal burst inward to the next room and Sam falls in a heap, her head just missing the corner of a table. The only light comes from the hole in the wall she'd just created but Sam can see that the room is filled with everything that Kellogg would consider a weapon that could get the job done. The walls coated with knives, Shotguns, Rifles, Grenades and everything else the wasteland could provide for a skilled mercenary. A cleared table with only a folder marked 300 in black pen. Sam flicks through the contents of the folder with instructions for an assassination and a poster for Goodneighbour's very own, memory den.

* * *

The Memory Den.   
Even though Sam's face hadn't been seen during Bobbi's job and even though she covered herself with a mask, she's still paranoid being back in Goodneighbour so soon; with who she had shot and killed. The building is dark and quiet as it usually is. Irma's silently perching on her lounge chair with her legs crossed in front of her as she reads from a damaged book. The sound of magnolias songs playing quietly through a radio while all of her customers lie inside their pods silently.  
If Kellogg is in town already he clearly hasn't made a move yet.  
The quiet atmosphere of the memory den shatters as the entrance doors are slammed and loud footsteps follow suite. Sam plants her back against the closest wall, a few metres away from the end of the entrance hall and nears in close to one of the draping curtains to hide herself while readying her gun for Kellogg. The steps stop at the doorway just out of Sam's view and then a familiar voice speaks.   
_"You got your payment?"_ Sam hides her gun and shoves it back into its holster.  
_"Are you doing the mayors job now? That's no work for a lady."_  
_"Irma, you're a week late. You're not reeling me into a conversation to get out of this shit."_ The voice walks forward to reveal the armoured figure of a ginger women.  
_"Hancock was a lot easier on us, you ought to sink into the job Fahrenheit."_

_"Fahrenheit, didn't expect to see you here so soon."_ Bobbi's voice had rung with false enthusiasm.  
_"With all the racket you and your possy were making on your way here, I couldn't resist."_  
_"You should have stayed home, love."_ Both women were readying their guns before Mel and Sam had even gotten into the strong room.   
_"What the fuck is she doing here! Bobbi, why are we here?"_ Mel was furious but Sam could hardly remember who the women was, much less where she'd seen her before.  
_"I see the rest of you are in the dark about this."_ The amusement in the women's voice was clear. _"You all just broke into Hancock's strongroom."_ Of coarse that's where Sam had known her. _"You two can slink back into your hole and let me deal with her or you can die here, it's your choice."_ Fahrenheit had been clearly serious.  
_"It's still the same job. You've both got caps on line."_ Bobbi, obviously still determined.  
_"No way Bobbi, were out!"_ Mel had spoken for both Sam and himself but he had been the only one that left.

Fahrenheit walks further forward and Sam sees the way that she limps on one leg just slightly but hid it well enough that you'd only notice if you knew it's supposed to be there. As the women continued their conversation Sam takes the chance to move out unseen by Fahrenheit by making a move for the exit quietly while holding her head down so that her overgrown fringe would cover her eyes.

The quality of homes and other buildings had gone down a lot in the past 210 years, this was a fact that Sam miserably acknowledged on a daily basis when she inevitably had to sleep in one of the creaky shacks of the wasteland. Despite Sam thinking of herself as a fairly quiet person who often goes unnoticed when she needs to, she had never really adjusted to the new quality of floorboards which is how Sam managed to bring both Irma's and Fahrenheit's attention straight to her on her way out the door. Caught like a deer in headlights.  
_"Haven't seen you here in a while." _  
_"Well-yea.. I've been out of town, had to make a stop at the ah-great green Jewel."_ Sam tried to seem conversational by steering her words into a mocking about the town that the entirety of Goodneighbour seems to hate, Fahrenheit doesn't take the bait and stares silently with an eyebrow cocked. _"I was actually hoping to speak with the mayor. You couldn't point me in the right defection could you?"_  
_"Hancock's out of town. Whatever you were going to say to him you can say to me instead."_  
_"Where's he gone?"_  
_"Out." _  
_"He left a few days ago with a mercenary, Love."_ Irma interrupts. _"Says he needs to reconnect with the wasteland after Bobbi."_  
_"Bobbi?" _Sam steps forward, acting intrigued.  
_"Don't tell me you haven't heard."_ Irma's excitement to retell the story is evident while Fahrenheit waits impatiently. _"Bobbi set up a team and tunnelled her way into Hancock's Strongroom. The ridiculous part is that one of them was wearing the mask of the silver shroud, and almost got this one killed."_ Irma looks over to Fahrenheit who almost looks uncomfortable if you look past the piercing gaze and and blunt posture.  
_"Did you want'a ask that question now?"_  
_"Yeah Im just looking for someone that I think should have passed through here."_  
_"I don't do that shit. If we were known for ratting out everyone who comes through here, Goodneighbour would lose half its drifters."_  
_"I need to find him. He's a murder!"_  
_"Him and every man in this town."_  
_"I guess if your not going to help Ive got nothing to be here for."_ Sam marches out, leaving them with no clue to who she really is.

UponSam's first time entering Goodneighbour she had found out pretty quickly that when the local government was being useless, the local bar is the most helpful part of the town; and if not at least she could afford to buy herself a drink now.

It's the same old third rail as the other times she'd neatly hid herself among the people. Smokey air being inhaled with ease by a range of thieves, murders and addicts. The kind of atmosphere a man like Kellog could evaporate into. In a town full of thieves and murderers and addicts why would Sam bother going after only one of them when it's almost confirmed that Shaun had been killed sometime along the way. When Sam can hardly tell the difference between herself and the man she's searching for.   
The music of the third rail gets better the longer the night goes on. Songs that first sound like background noise become convoluted. An annoying thump of a beat that would usually just have your drink dancing alone in its glass turns into a rhythmic pulse that runs through your skin. The words coming from Magnolias perfectly painted lips sound a charming suggestion that drives a drunken mind into incomprehensible thoughts.  
And before long you're on your sixth drink and that feeling is more overwhelming than not and most likely a side effect from going without any alcohol for a couple centuries.  
The entire bar seems to move together with the music while Sam fits herself through the gaps in the crowd to find something still. She catches onto a doorframe before she sees the small amount of food she'd eaten in the past twenty four hours thrown back up onto the floor in front of her. Despite the mess she'd made no one even bothered to look over at her in the dark end of the bar while the music choked out the sounds of her coughing. Choked out the sounds of the conversations around her and almost chokes out the distant sound of a women's voice.

_"Get off of me, I'm not doing this with you anymore." _As Sam staggers down the hallway she hears someone hit the floor.  
_"What is it darling? You want to have a go on top?"_ The man drunkenly try's to charm her back while he lies on the floor.  
The man takes a moment to tuck himself back in and turns around with a scowl that contorts the long scar that sits on his eye.  
Back then he'd had a smirk plastered across his face and he wouldn't have let any women walk away from him or let them stand in the way of what he wanted, or at least he didn't let Nora.   
  
Kellog walks straight out of the room without a second glance to Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously I skipped a lot of the main quests at the start of this and that's because I didn't really see my ss as someone who would have enough hope to ever really consider trying to find Shaun or Kellog in a place like the commonwealth but when Piper mentions a kidnapper she decides to look into it since she kind of stumbled onto this accidentally so the acctualt story does progress very soon. I'm also hoping 'the big dig' quest line is familiar to everyone who's reading this since you have to do it to even get Hancock as a companion so I skimmed over it but just to clarify yes she has already stolen from the strong hold but never got caught.


	10. Parasite

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After that chapter it's fairly obvious where we're going, but get excited for the next few chapters cause I get to actually write for the ghoul boyfriend. 

**10\. Parasite.**

  
Due to depopulation of people since the year 2027 it had become especially difficult to hide within the scraps of civilisation. If someone was looking for you there's only a number of places any sane person would stay that they would have to check before they would find you. This fact had mostly been a hindrance for Sam but unsurprisingly comes in handy when tracking a murder through a small town.  
All she had to do was look nonchalant in the only hotel in town whilst waiting for him to drunkenly get back to his room from the bar.  
Sam slips in through the bright red doors of the Rexford mixing the fresh air from outside with the clouds of smoke and the stench of the soon-to-be hangovers.  
The tattered couches that fill the Rexford lobby are filled by a few thoroughly drunk men who seem more like corpses, one of which lies with their head up at a 90' degree angle slowly slurping at a dirty cup of (hopefully) water and another snoring comically loud with his sunglasses on a crooked angle.  
The usual receptionist is nowhere to be seen and the sound of a distant tune plays from the radio that Sam knows has been placed underneath the reception desk.   
It's a stark contrast to the crowded bar, in comparison this place is a ghost town.  
  
She moves through the drunks as subtly as she had entered to take residence on a small blue armchair that reminds her of one she'd had before, but with less stains and grime. Despite her real home being from a time where things were always clean and law still ruled Sam sinks into the dim atmosphere of the hotel like she'd been breathing it in her whole life.  
  
It feels like she's been waiting hours, the fuzzy hum of the radio now overpowered by the ongoing tic of the clock. Each heavy breath and murmured groan from the surrounding drunks interrupt any chance of rest so all she can do is stare at the shattered clock that says its 7 but it's pitch black outside. It hadn't taken her long to figure out that the clocks hour hand never moves but she still hopes the morning rays will shine through the holes in the wall any minute.  
Like a convulsion the front door clicks and a single man passes through quietly. If she hadn't been waiting all this time for him she would hardly have recognised the calm, quiet stride he takes past the entrance and straight toward the first floor staircase. It's so unlike the violent overconfidence that she had seen from him in the holotape, there's no determined scowl or destruction.  
He doesn't get a paycheck for waving round his gun in here so he doesn't bother.  
  
There's only two levels in the entire building that still have in-tact rooms so Sam lags behind, stealing the sunglasses off one of the sleeping men and slowly making her way, behind him. She's far enough that she can hardly hear his footsteps above her head as he walks through the halls of the top floor. She tiptoes up the stairwell and eventually hears the click of his door and the thump of his hefty bag hitting the floor.  
Then silence.  
She stays crouched at the end of the hallway just in case.  
Despite his drunkenness she'd seen that he was still coherent as he'd entered the hotel so just in case she waits till she knows he's asleep.  
Patiently waiting for almost half an hour, till the suns beams threaten to poke through, she does not dare touch her pip boy for the noises it would make.  
  
She carefully avoids each loose floorboard, making sure to test the ground before putting any weight onto the board; until she reaches the door she had heard him enter.   
Just when she reaches the door she pulls out the knife from her boot, she'd never been a brawny build even when she'd been selected for the military. They'd known the minute they'd seen her that she wasn't meant for the real fight.   
If she was going to overpower him she'd have to get him pinned below her with no way for him to throw her off before he even has any idea that she's in there.  
  
She lightly twists the door handle to release and slips through a tiny crack. As quickly as she can think she's beside his bed where he lies.  
His scarred rough face seems less evil than it had in the tapes and much more beaten, when she can see him up close.  
He'd gotten what he'd deserved at some point.  
  


The door abruptly clicks back into place. Sam clenches her fist around the knife and pushes it against his throat as if daring him to wake up.  
His face has no movement.  
She takes the chance to place her knees on either side of his waist and her legs secure his from moving. She uses her spare hand to grip his wrist tightly.  
His eyes don't pop open and he doesn’t look shocked. He doesn't scowl in anger.   
He smirks.   
He looks up at her like its a Sunday morning, and smirks.  
_"I didn't know I'd been put on the shrouds personal hit list. What's Kent got against me anyway?" _  
In an instant he's pushes her hand away from his wrist and uses her own knife against her. Slashing deep into her arm. She falls back in red hot pain.  
He's doesn't launch at her. He just stands above her staring.  
_"I know I've pissed off a lot of people, specially in these parts but I'm having trouble figuring this one out.  
"I'm not here on business this time."  
_She stomps the front of his ankle and he falls. Quickly he reaches for her hand with the knife.  
She kicks herself away from his grasp and into a desk.  
_"You wouldn't remember my face but I think-"_  
She reaches around the top of the desk. Not taking her eyes off of him.  
_"You might remember my nephew."_  
She launches the lamp at his head but it only grazes his cheek. He stomps toward her, recollecting his balance.  
_"I don't do those jobs anymore."  
"D'you raid vaults often? Cause I'm having a hard time believing you've forgotten this job!"  
_He stops a minute to look at her like she's making some bad joke.  
She takes the chances to launch herself toward his chest and land him back on to the bed.  
_"He hadn't even started school yet, but you took him!"  
_Her fist collides with his jaw and he seems more bothered by her words than the punch. He catches the second punch and pushes her backward.  
_"You've got to be fucking kidding me. Vault one-eleven."_  
He lets out a heart chuckle and steps above her again, this time so she can't kick his ankles in. He drops to his knees and surrounds her with his weight. He strikes her a cross the cheek   
_"you’re on a goose chase if you think you're finding that kid."  
"Where.. Is he?" _She’s gasping for air now.  
_"He's past your reach."_  
He loosens his grip just enough to look her in the eyes for a split second like a silent apology. She seizes the moment, spitting her blood into his face.  
He sends his hand straight to her neck and squeezes till she's seeing white. He pauses a moment. _"I think you know. No matter I say, you know what has to be done."_  
She throws herself forward to collide heads with him. Using the bed frame as footing to push herself out of his arms, she quickly gets back on her feet as he makes a dishevelled attempt to grab at her.   
_"What the fuck did you do to him!"  
_She runs forward and pushes him onto his back and collects her knife from the ground.   
_"You’re in over your head, in ways you can't even imagine."_  
She pulls the knife flush with his neck.  
_"Where is he."_ She almost whispers the question. Almost soothing him.  
_"You won't find him."_ Even when he knows he's about to die, when he's just lying there not even trying to fight against her, he's adamant that she's lost Shaun, that he's gone for good.  
She almost wants to take the chance to just roll over beside him and thank him for saving her the trouble. For giving her the opportunity to look at the wasteland and all the monsters in it just to turn heel and run back to the rotting vault she'd come from.  
The almost silent sound of someone else entering the door is enough for her to decide to end this now. With one small push forward he's done.

No matter What.  
Revenge is supposed to be a lot sweeter than the blood that spurts across her face and past her dried lips. This wasn't revenge, not till she knew exactly what for.  
  
She almost instantly lurches sideward and collapses on the ground next to <strike>his</strike> the body. Only then does she see the blood across his hands and face are not only his. She feels the sensation of coming bruises and the deep cuts he left her with. The white noise of the clock two stories down seems louder than the footsteps that creep closer to her.  
She lets herself close her eyes as she feels a warm hand slide across her wrist.  
  



End file.
